Whether to cop to it or not

I have some complex feelings regarding the police in a professional capacity. Some might consider it a love-hate type dynamic. Most of the time, it is not something that comes into play in the course of my day. For those moments where it does, it introduces what seems to be a form of social calculus. What warrants gaining their attention? Is it worth the bother? Will the costs outweigh the benefit I seek to gain? Can manipulate matters in my favor? At times, it can present quite a thorny problem.

The store and thus the employees within are firmly on the legitimate side of the law. We pay our taxes, we keep our heads down, and we pursue a legal line of business. In that, we're no different from a supermarket or vacuum cleaner repair shop. From that basis alone, you would not expect a degree of opinion either for or against. We're just citizenry to be protected and served.

Except we sell stuff that involved nipples, fluids, and areas of the body usually obscured by knickers. This little detail tends to rankle some folks. It climbs up their rectums and sets to irritating them like a gerbil cocooned in steel wool. Terms like "immoral," "lewd," and "sinful" bubble up in their minds, slow, sticky and tar black. These are the people convinced our presence lowers the neighborhood appeal. They shake their heads and lump us into what they consider to be the undesirable elements.

Unfortunately, they are just as much a part of the community as those who like and appreciate sexually oriented businesses. Which means that the police have to keep public opinion, especially vocal detractors, in mind when they interact with a store like this one. They can't be seen as too cozy or comfortable lest allegations of corruption begin to sprout up like mushrooms as the manure starts to accumulate.

Not that we would flourish under a warm and close relationship with the cops. A squad car in the parking lot affects most customers like ice water dumped on the crotch. Customer flow drops precipitously and that's never good for the bottom line. Patrons can also get a mite paranoid as well wondering if we're sharing information with the boys in blue. The answer is fucking hell NO, but fear doesn't have to be rational to color their thoughts. Everyone thinks their sexual appetite is aberrant and shameful.

Where the in-depth weighing of response comes in are the customers. There are bars within minutes of here and even if they aren't driving sloshed, drunks can cover a surprising amount of ground on foot. The inebriated are always wild cards. They can be a mild, easily dismissed annoyance to a raving, excessively violent hazard or anything in between and subject to change without warning. Deciding when and if to call the cops when some utterly soused idiot is making a nuisance of themselves is as much an art as it is experience.

Good store location generally means that there's a fair amount of traffic in the area. Simple odds mean that some of them are going to be high or mentally disturbed. The more traffic, the more one usually have to deal with. Thus, we have variations on the drunken theme with the same risks and trappings.

You might think it would be best to play it safe and be more prone to alerting the authorities when a potential problem is arising. Except there are people who track how often the police have to respond to an adult store in the hopes of being able to show we're a problem area. They want nothing more than to be able to show we attract crime and are a steady drain of community police resources. Besides, no one wants to be a place the cops know by heart from calls.

On the other hand, delaying too long can result in destroyed property and/or physical injury.

It's a bitch.